Re: JDS's use of Capitals - Buddhism link
AntiUtopia (AntiUtopia@aol.com)
Wed, 11 Mar 1998 06:57:01 -0500 (EST)
Welcome to the List, Camille, I think you're gonna be offering up some pretty
good insights :)
I wonder if being from Down Under makes your smiley faces turn this way, (: ,
instead of the other way, :) , something like a hypertext circadian rhythm? :)
I think that Buddhism (and there is probably a distinction between Buddhism
and Salinger's Buddhism) would approach via negation. It's not that words are
too broad, but that the very objects they describe in all their specificity
are to be negated as well. God is "not this...not this....not this..." and
certainly not expressed in words. One listmember said, along these lines,
that if in Western thought 2+2=4, in Buddhist thought 2+2=
And I Don't think we can psychoanalyze Salinger through any one of his
characters. Oh no. No way. I don't think we can approach him at all through
his literature except through an analysis of All his characters in all his
available writing. Holden is one little slice of a much bigger picture.
Jim
In a message dated 98-03-11 04:51:28 EST, you write:
<< This also ties in very nicely with Salinger's Buddhist interests, one of
the main axioms of which is `No reliance on words' - obviously a
conundrum for a writer ! - the implication being that words are far to
broad to express the smaller subtleties and complexities of the
universe. I believe that through his capitalization, Salinger in effect
is trying to defeat this conundrum of the narrowness of words by turning
them into entities or concepts.
P.S. I'm new to Bananafish (I'm an Australian student at Sydney
University) so please give me a Warm Welcome and a late-blooming bunch
of parentheses. (:
Camille
>>